JOB DESCRIPTION
Over the past three decades Russia’s health care has underwent marketization, its locally produced medical knowledge has come in touch with the ideas of evidence-based medicine, while its pharmaceutical industry has become the center of the state’s efforts to consolidate its political status. This complex arena opens a unique window to explore mutually constitutive relations between politics, health technologies, and markets, and the role informality plays in these relations.
The two PhD projects will focus on 1) pharmaceutical market and 2) private healthcare provision. Both projects will concern accessibility of quality medicines and health care to patients and accessibility of the Russian market to pharmaceutical companies and healthcare organizations. PhD candidates will trace the multitude of (informal) ways actors use to navigate this uncertain terrain. What kinds of market mechanisms have been created to enable work in this environment with its changing and often unspoken rules and ways of doing things? How do novel health technologies and knowledge become engaged in profit-making? What are the implications for public health, business cultures, political authority, and practices of citizenship?
The appointed PhD candidates are expected to contribute conceptually to the scholarship on informality and on relations between science, politics and markets, and to develop methodological expertise in studying informal phenomena in uncertain situations. PhD candidates will spend considerable time in the field, collecting data and developing ethnographic understanding of the environment. They will also collaborate with the rest of the Marie Curie PhD cohort and project team members to better understand and compare their results. PhD candidates at Maastricht University are also expected to disseminate their results to both academic and non-academic audiences and develop skills in translating research results into useful insights for practitioners.
REQUIREMENTS
Candidates’ profile:
CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT
Fixed-term contract: 3 years.
The terms of employment of Maastricht University are set out in the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities (CAO). Furthermore, local UM provisions also apply. For more information look at the website http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl > Support > UM employees.
What we offer:
You will be based in Maastricht, a wonderful city to live in. Exactly the right size, inviting and lovely city centre, historic buildings besides cutting-edge architecture and industrial heritage. The city is vibrant, not in the least thanks to the many students. Since the Maastricht Treaty (1992) the city is known as the birthplace of the European Union and the ‘Schengen Treaty’. It is an international city that opens up to young and old, to people from all cultures and backgrounds, for students and working people. Maastricht counts over 100 international institutes and organisations.
EMPLOYER
Maastricht University is renowned for its unique, innovative, problem-based learning system, which is characterized by a small-scale and student-oriented approach. Research at UM is characterized by a multidisciplinary and thematic approach, and is concentrated in research institutes and schools. Maastricht University has around 18,000 students and 4,300 employees. Reflecting the university’s strong international profile, a fair amount of both students and staff are from abroad. The university hosts 6 faculties: Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Faculty of Law, School of Business and Economics, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
To apply for this position we need the following documents:
For further information about the project, its content, and the tasks of PhD candidates you can contact Olga Zvonareva at o.zvonareva@maastrichtuniversity.nl. If you have questions about the application process, please contact Hellen Heutz at H.Heutz@maastrichtuniversity.nl.